1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an inspecting apparatus, an inspecting method and an inspecting program for inspecting a result of a working operation performed on a circuit substrate, and also relates to an electric-circuit fabricating system, an electric-circuit fabricating method and an electric-circuit fabricating program including such inspecting apparatus, method and program, respectively.
2. Description of Related Art
An electric circuit is fabricated by performing various working operations on a circuit substrate, such as a solder applying operation to apply by printing a creamy solder or a solder paste to predetermined spots on the circuit substrate, an adhesive applying operation to apply an adhesive agent to predetermined spots on the circuit substrate for fixing electric components (including electronic components), an electric-component mounting operation to mount the electric components at predetermined spots on the circuit substrate, a soldering operation to solder the mounted electric components. To assure correct working operations performed on the circuit substrate, the circuit substrate on which the working operations have been performed is usually subjected to an inspecting operation. The number of the working operations to be performed is increased as the required density of the electric components in the electric circuit and the structural complexity of the electric circuit are increased. Where the fabrication of the electric circuit includes a large number of working operations, accurate inspection of all of the performed working operations imposes a considerable burden. In this respect, there is a need of inspecting the working operations with high efficiency. For example, the time required to inspect the component mounting operations tends to be increased due to an increase in the number of the electric components required to be mounted and to satisfy a need of improving the accuracy of mounting of the electric components. Thus, there is a particularly high need of improving the efficiency of inspection of the component mounting operations.